


Stealing Time

by mautadite



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 07:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4598058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good Queen Shireen, her guardians, a lot of spiders, and the theft of time.</p><p>Fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stealing Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stoneheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoneheart/gifts).



> Written not long after the end of S5. Mona asked for: _Queen Shireen still likes playing [insert kid game here] with her two moms, don't tell the populace._ This got fluffy as hell, which I make no apologies for. Eat me, GOT writers.

The closet is dark, and full of spiders.

Shireen doesn’t mind the little insects, though. They’d proliferated in the library on Dragonstone, tiny little things with balls for bodies and sticks for legs who’d seemed to love books as much as she did. They aren’t so abundant in the Red Keep, but are still to be found in dark corners and damp spots. Much like her little closet, tucked in a faraway corridor in the Maidenvault. Shireen giggles, and has to adjust her crown. This is her best spot yet.

It had been Melisandre to suggest the old game. Aegon had been by again, with a horde of advisors and servants, come to argue once more that Targaryen or no, it still made the best sense for her to marry him. She’s told him no four times already, but he ignores her wishes with such dedicated steadfastness that she has to wonder if he doesn’t have a drop of dragon blood indeed.

Mother had run him off, as usual, with scathing words and a haughty eye. And Melisandre, away from the eyes of the small council, had suggested that Shireen take a little break from court. Mother had objected at first – she had never quite loved Father perhaps, but she is devoted to his memory and his love of duty – but it only took a few smiles and pouts before the cold, unrelenting line of her mouth began to twitch.

Shireen glances at her timepiece by the light filtering through the small window. Only twenty more minutes until she wins the game, if she remains unfound. She settles into a corner with the book she’d brought with her, careful not to disturb any of her insect friends.

The book was a gift from Melisandre. The priestess had pulled it from one of the high shelves of the Red Keep’s library six years ago, a few months after they’d first arrived. Shireen had still been skittish and unsure around the red woman, unnerved by her sudden change, her constant silence. No one, except perhaps Mother, knew what it was that she had seen in her flames that had made her draw back from that battle at dawn, all but abandoning Jon Snow while his sword hand was singing. Years later, she remains unaware, though Melisandre is much like her old self once more.

In the library that day, Shireen had hidden behind the stack of books that she’d collected to read in the coming days, when her waking hours were not quite so taxed with issues of war and death. She had watched Melisandre, not knowing if she’d been observed or not, as the red woman ghosted around the library, touching the books by their spines, pulling a few out to leaf through their fragile pages. Shireen remembers being surprised that Mother wasn’t with her; she had dogged the priestess’ steps more than ever in the wake of the death of King Stannis. Melisandre had been alone however; she seemed to _need_ to be.

Long an hour had she spent, perusing the cavernous room, and before she left, she had passed by Shireen’s table. Shireen had started, but Melisandre only smiled faintly, and given her the book.

“A little girl that I...” She cleared her throat. “That I once knew loved this story very much. Perhaps... well. Perhaps.”

And she left.

It is not a very cheery story: a poor little girl, a ghastly winter, an ever dwindling supply of matches. But it is much thumbed now; Shireen rereads it at least twice a year. Every time she does, she thinks she understands Melisandre a little bit more.

Voices from the corridor alert her, and she sits upright, listening hard. Not her mother or Melisandre, but even worse: two of her royal guard.

She squirms uncomfortably in place. There are many things to be said, she knows, of an ugly girl queen with a tenuous grasp on the throne, and people say them all the time. Though she knows how much she’s grown, by her mother’s hand and Melisandre’s and Ser Barristan’s, and that she rules as best as she can, she can well imagine what _else_ might be said if it became known that good Queen Shireen still succumbed to the urge to play children’s games with her mother and her mother’s paramour.

She listens, ears straining. It’s as bad as it can get; the guards are discussing her, and her whereabouts. Apparently she’s wanted by the small council again, and someone had spotted her hurrying into the Vault. Shireen sighs, ready to give herself up and swallow her shame, when another voice rings out along the corridor.

“You there! What are you doing loitering in this hall?”

Shireen would know her mother’s voice anywhere, and thank the seven for her intervention. The footsteps that had been getting perilously close to the closet stop in their tracks, and she hears the men salute.

“Your Grace! Not loitering, Your Grace, we were tasked with finding the Queen.”

“Well, as we can all see, the Queen is not here.” Melisandre’s voice, that one, melodious and honeyed.

“Well... I mean... That is to say...”

There is a pause, wherein someone presumably points to the closet door. Shireen can almost _hear_ as her mother draws herself up to her full height, which, at four inches above six feet, is a fair bit taller than most men.

“Do you mean to imply,” she begins, voice dripping with ice, “that my daughter, Queen Shireen of House Baratheon, the first of her name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of these Seven Kingdoms, is for some reason at this very moment ensconced in a tiny, dank _broom closet_?”

By the end of it, Shireen has to clap her hand to her mouth to stop from giggling. Both guards are a stuttering, stammering mess, and Shireen can well imagine the scathing look that her mother has pinned them with. Poor things.

Melisandre rescues them, stepping in neatly to suggest that they check for the Queen in another wing. The guards are quick to flee.

Shireen peers out of a crack in the door, and sees Melisandre turning a fond look on her mother.

“You need not have been so stern, my dear.”

“Need I not have, Melony?” She sniffs. “Even if our daughter _is_ hiding in a broom closet, it isn’t their place to point it out.”

And well, if the game wasn’t already up, it certainly is now. Shireen turns the rusty lock and clambers out of the closet, grinning at her mother and Melisandre as she shoos away her spider friends. They’ve managed to crawl into her hair and her sleeves, and reluctantly begin to spin away when Shireen moves.

“Found me,” she says. Melisandre winks, and there’s a flash of pink as she sticks out her tongue. Shireen chuckles ruefully. She should have known they would have found her eventually; there’s no one who knows the Red Keep quite like Mel. She walks over, to be briefly kissed by one and fastidiously de-cobwebbed by another.

“Of course,” Mother says shortly, plucking at a particularly stubborn tangle of silk. Her tone is belied by the slightest smile on her lips. “We always do.”

Melisandre nods, kissing Mother this time, leaving a red stain on her cheek that’s quickly covered by her blush. She winks at Shireen.

“And we always will.”

The words make a warmth pool in the bottom of Shireen’s stomach, like a spool of thread slowly becoming undone. Her mother’s hand on her shoulder feels less like a function and more like a caress, melting away any regrets Shireen might have had about stealing time to be little again. She’d had so few moments like this, years ago, and she suspects that the same can be said for the women before her.

It might not be the queenliest thing to do, but she wants to make sure to keep putting aside time for these moments. Precious things, she’s learning, come in many forms: an embrace, kind words, matches in the cold.

When Shireen steps back into the throne room, fifteen minutes later, it is with straight shoulders, newly brushed hair, a steady crown, and hands folded with determination to begin her work anew. As always, her mother and her mother’s lover are with her, only a few paces behind.


End file.
